(2007-11-20) — Top United Nations’ scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they wildly overstated the size and the spread of the AIDS epidemic, but that all the millions of people who don’t actually have AIDS will soon drown in the rising tide caused by man-made global climate change.

Faulty methodology caused the scientists to miss the fact that AIDS has been in decline during the same decade when U.N. reports about its rapid, unchecked spread boosted AIDS funding 30-fold, to about $10 billion per year.

“No matter how you look at it, the news is tragic, and more funding is needed,” said Peter Piot, the Belgian scientist whose U.N. AIDS agency reports have driven fund raising. Mr. Piot has previously reported that …

* “the pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions”
* the epidemic threatens to burst beyond its epicenter in southern Africa to generate widespread illness and death in other countries
* in China alone, there would be 10 million infections — up from 1 million in 2002 — by the end of the decade.

Now, Mr. Piot said, the fate of countless millions has gone from bad to worse.

“A man who might have died quietly in his bed of AIDS,” said Mr. Piot, “now faces the terrifying specter of watching his neighbors slip from their rooftops one-by-one, screaming until the rising deep muffles their voices, knowing that he faces the inevitable moment when his fingers slip from the chimney, the brine subdues his own shrieks and the sea becomes his tomb.”

Mr. Piot denied accusations that he makes alarmist statements to serve a political and fundraising agenda rather than following rigorous scientific processes.

“My alarmist statements have resulted in billions of dollars in funding for research,” Mr. Piot said. “I’m making sure scientists get paid. What could be more scientific than that?”

” Doing the math, that means as of today—– over the past 5 years, while millions of mostly white and middle to upper class human beings with internet connections engaged in arguments about the minute details of a terrorist attack that occured in the United States on September 11th, over 60 million children have died. Because of starvation. I had breakfast today, how about you?”

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:

– 29 have been accused of spousal abuse
– 7 have been arrested for fraud
– 19 have been accused of writing bad checks
– 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
– 3 have done time for assault
– 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
– 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
– 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
– 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
– 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

We’re being bullied now into thinking that we have a ‘moral duty’ to intervene in other people’s governments when they don’t meet our human rights standards.But as Jean Bricmont points out in his book Humanitarian Imperialism(translated from French by Diana Johnstone), imperialism has a way of using everything it can to further its own ends.And since it’s power that gets to define what a human rights standard is, the powerless don’t get much of a look in

That bullying is effective.For example, how many Democrats do you know who would challenge their own party when it says, sanctimoniously, that we can’t just ‘cut and run’ now that Iraq has descended into chaos?How many people hesitate to argue when someone at a dinner party passionately urges military intervention to solve some problem somewhere else?How many people, even though well meaning as hell, have become completely blind to the fact that, in the world, we the privileged ones are not the Subject that brings Peace, Democracy, and Goodness to the rest of the world, which is then reduced to an Object that we’re supposed to maintain?Just about everybody you know, probably.I certainly get confused about it.

Fortunately, Jean Bricmont has painstakingly separated out the confusing threads that make up our present tie to militarization.He talks about how ideology rather than force is the preferred invisible instrument of control in a democratic society.He lays out the costs of the imperialism we practice without naming it, even to ourselves.He sets out a series of questions to those who would use human rights as an argument for war.For example, he wants to know if they are willing to accept responsibility for torture.Torture, as Bricmont points out, is a direct result of war.“An army that finds itself the target of resistance fighters who are like fish in the sea is inexorably led to try to gain information by force.If one calls for military intervention, one is calling for war and occupation, and in that case, in effect calling for torture.”And Bricmont is not fuzzy minded about torture:he knows that it works.The French dismantled the rebellion in Algeria using torture, even if it didn’t help them to maintain ultimate control.And it certainly has worked in crushing rebellions against American interests in Latin America.But, as he points out, in those scenarios, “no serious person can see bright prospects for human rights.”So the question is:if you’re for preemptive and ‘humanitarian’ war, are you prepared to take the responsibility for what it sure to follow?Rape, massacre, torture — these are not the result of the brutal military mind.These are the inevitable (indeed, traditional, historical) results of war.If you want it, you got it.

Bricmont, with blessed ruthlessness, dissects our prevailing ideology:the ideology of the dinner party, of the glossy magazine, of the cult of personal growth, of everything that just wants to think of itself as good while letting its government get on with the murderous business as usual that lets us lead such pleasant lives here at home.He points out that imperialism (that’s us, guys, yep, that’s right, take a look at ourselves, that’s us, not the underdog no matter what stories we tell ourselves — the Empire) has a way of using everything it can to further its own ends.

“To function as an instrument of domination,” he says, “the human rights ideology calls for rewriting history, selective indignation, and arbitrary priorities.”In other words, only the powerful get to say what’s a violation of human rights and what’s not, with the inevitable result that, by definition, what the powerful does is not an abuse.But, he says, there’s also hope:“The paradox is that the more ethics advances toward a genuine universality — and the human rights ideology constitutes an advance in relation to previous ideologies — the more hypocritical the dominant power becomes.The current dominator powers have a more universalist discourse than, say, Genghis Khan; as a result, they need to be more hypocritical.”

Loose Change Final Cut is the third installment of the documentary that asks the tough questions about the 9/11 attacks and related events. …all »This movie hopes to be the catalyst for a new independent investigation, in which the family members receive answers to their questions, and the TRUE PERPETRATORS of this horrendous crime are PROSECUTED and PUNISHED

Yesterday, as the dollar fell to new record lows and oil and gold prices surged to new highs, Wall Street remained fixated on wholly meaningless government data that managed to report the lowest inflation in the last half century. These bizarre numbers were integral in allowing the Commerce Department to report 3.9% annualized GDP growth in the third quarter, which was heralded by the bulls as evidence that a resilient U.S. economy had shrugged off the problems in the housing and mortgage markets. However, the government’s ability to make “economic growth” magically appear is based purely on statistical finesse.

To arrive at this rate, the government had to assume that inflation during the quarter ran at an annualized rate of .8% (that’s less than 1%). That is the lowest rate of inflation used to calculate U.S. GDP since the Eisenhower administration. With oil priced at almost $100 per barrel, gold futures trading over $800 per ounce, the dollar hitting record lows, and the Fed printing money like it is going out of style, the government has the nerve to claim that current inflation is the lowest it has been in half a century. Unbelievable!

Just in case there is some confusion, the government adjusts nominal GDP gains using the GDP deflator, which represents the inflation rate during the time period being measured. This is done to strip inflation out of the GDP calculation so that only real growth gets counted: not nominal gains that result purely from inflation.

The consensus estimate for 3rd quarter GDP growth was 3.4%. The reason we beat that number was that the government adjusted the nominal 4.7% gain by a mere .8%. Had the government assumed a higher rate of inflation, say 2.6% (identical to the rate used to deflate second quarter GDP,) the 3rd quarter gain would have been only 2.1%, well shy of the consensus forecast. My guess is that inflation is actually running at an annualized rate closer to 10%. Therefore using a more honest deflator, the U.S. economy is actually contracting, which would explain the recent anecdotal evidence provided by various economic polls, voter dissatisfaction and consumer sentiment numbers. In fact, if one simply measures U.S. GDP using gold or any other currency, it is clear that we are already in a recession.

Similar illusions are created in other numbers, such as retail sales, corporate earnings, and stock prices, which are all rising merely as a result of actual inflation being higher than the official reports. For example, higher retail sales reflect consumers paying higher prices for the products that they buy. They may in fact be buying less stuff, but are paying more for it. Further, part of the gains result from tourists using their appreciated foreign currencies to buy products cheaper here than they can in the own countries. I have heard about Canadians checking into U.S. hotels with empty suitcases, crossing the border to indulge in weekend shopping sprees.

Corporate earnings, particularly those of multi-nationals, are padded as their foreign currency denominated earnings translate into more dollars when those earnings are repatriated. However, such gains are illusions, as companies merely earn more dollars of diminished value for the goods they sell. The actual volume of exports does not necessarily improve much, as evidenced by weak industrial production and manufacturing employment. When those additional debased dollars are paid out as dividends, they confer no real increase in global purchasing power to shareholders.

Similarly, just as inflation causes prices to rise for goods and services it causes stock prices to rise as well. Though such gains may be less than the actual increase in the cost of living, as long as the government gets away with using bogus CPI numbers which fail to fully reflect inflation, Wall Street takes credit for nominal gains as if they were real.

However, as ridiculous as the phony GDP number was, yesterday’s biggest joke was a report on global competitiveness put out by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which ranked the U.S. economy as the world’s most competitive. To arrive at this conclusion, the forum has obliterated the obvious under a mountain of theory. In determining country rankings, the WEF weighed strengths in their “12 Pillars of Competitiveness”, including: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation. Completely ignored however are the measurable results of competitiveness, notably a trade surplus and a strong currency.

It is as if the WEF decided to judge a weight loss contest without using a scale, by instead focusing only on mental attitude, dedication, perseverance, and nutritional education! As a result the prize is awarded to the fattest contestant. Based on the empirical evidence of a gargantuan trade deficit, staggering global indebtedness, and a declining currency, the United States is clearly not the most competitive economy in the world.